Poetry Podcast: Tracy K. Smith Reads Kevin Young

This month, on the Poetry Podcast Tracy K. Smith, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2012 for her collection “Life on Mars,” reads “Crowning,” by Kevin Young. The poem presents childbirth from the perspective of the father, whom Smith describes as a “beholden” witness:

now that you are more born than being, more awake than awaited

Smith says that she is taken by the poem’s “sense of almost arrival” and by its structure, which is one long, arduous sentence. Smith also reads her own poem “Alternate Take: Levon Helm,” a piece similarly concerned with rhythm and with the labor-like process of writing, particularly that moment.

whatever those

Six lines were bothered by skitters off like water in hot grease….

So the song has to climb its way out like a man from a mine.

Kevin Young’s new collection, ”Book of Hours,” is forthcoming from Knopf, in March. You can hear Smith’s reading and her conversation with the magazine’s poetry editor, Paul Muldoon, by listening above or by downloading the podcast for free from iTunes.

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